Dorothee Birke - Böcker

Counterfactuality is currently a hotly debated topic. While for some disciplines such as linguistics, cognitive science, or psychology counterfactual scenarios have been an important object of study for quite a while, counterfactual thinking has in recent years emerged as a method of study for other disciplines, most notably the social sciences. This volume provides an overview of the current definitions and uses of the concept of counterfactuality in philosophy, historiography, political sciences, psychology, linguistics, physics, and literary studies. The individual contributions not only engage the controversies that the deployment of counterfactual thinking as a method still generates, they also highlight the concept’s potential to promote interdisciplinary exchange without neglecting the limitations and pitfalls of such a project. Moreover, the essays from literary studies, which make up about half of the volume, provide both a historical and a systematic perspective on the manifold ways in which counterfactual scenarios can be incorporated into and deployed in literary texts.

‘Realism’ is a pervasive term in discussions of contemporary developments in the cultural sphere. By drawing on different theories of realism, the authors explore how the term may be used as a helpful concept in order to analyse and evaluate current trends in cultural production and, in turn, how cultural production changes our understanding of what counts as ‘realism’. The contributions deal with realism in narrative fiction, drama and audiovisual media (film, television news) within the context of national traditions: examples drawn on in the case studies range from Africa, Britain, Germany, Iceland, Russia, Turkey to the United States. While the authors take their cues from media-specific ‘realisms’, focusing especially on narrative fiction, the volume also highlights continuities and intersections between notions of realism in different genres and media. With its original essays, this collection invigorates the transdisciplinary engagement with forms and socio-political functions of realism in contemporary culture.

The history of the novel is also a history of shifting views of the value of novel reading. This study investigates how novels themselves participate in this development by featuring reading as a multidimensional cultural practice. English novels about obsessive reading, written in times of medial transition, serve as test cases for a model that brings together analyses of form and content.

The distinction between author and narrator is one of the cornerstones of narrative theory. In the past two decades, however, scope, implications and consequences of this distinction have become the subjects of debate. This volume offers contributions to these debates from different vantage points: literary studies, linguistics, philosophy, and media studies. It thus manifests the status of narrative theory as a transdisciplinary project.

The volume traces the ways in which ideas of Europeanness shaped discourses of inclusion and exclusion over the last centuries. The starting point is a basic tension inherent in any concept of Europe, i.e. that it links some set of cultural values to a space on the western fringe of the Asian landmass, but at the same time allows for a large degree of internal diversity, the boundaries of which are constantly shifting. The variety of forms how such mental maps underpinned notions of difference and belonging in the light of Europeanness are at the core of the book. It brings together historical, literary, cultural, and art studies in exploring how topographies of Europe-related values figured in struggles over political domination and cultural hierarchies. The chapters focus on the relationships between imagined European centres and regions that have been regarded as being on the periphery of Europe: be it in geographical terms or in other respects such as political system, religious creed, or economic performance. In a long-term view, the volume considers the enduring nature of the cognitive and normative patterns involved in this kind of mental mapping and thus makes an important contribution to the field of European studies.